Discuss History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund:Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

Created: 11/28/17

Replies: 12

Posted Nov. 28, 2017
|
|
|

kimk

Join Date: 10/16/10

Posts: 353

Expert

Religious experiences?

I was surprised that Patra was so committed to being a Christian Scientist when she obviously learned about the faith as an adult.

Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged? I'm curious as to what others think of Patra's religious experience compared to their own.

Posted Nov. 28, 2017
|
|
|

kimk

Join Date: 10/16/10

Posts: 353

Expert

RE: Religious experiences?

I was raised as a religious "mutt," I think. My parents met at a Reformed church (a Protestant denomination), while my grandparents were Roman Catholics. My parents sent me to church with Baptists for a while, before trying a more local Presbyterian church. I went to a Lutheran university, and as a young adult (20s-30s) was very active with the United Methodists. Now in my 50s, I think I've become more spiritual but less religious - my "church" is the forests & mountains these days - but especially at Patra's age I was pretty hard-core, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at her commitment. Perhaps that's a phase a lot of people go through at that age.

Posted Nov. 29, 2017
|
|
|

susiej

Join Date: 10/15/14

Posts: 184

Expert

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

I was raised Missouri Synod Lutheran but became Roman Catholic when I first married. At Patra's age, I was concerned about unity of faith in our household and raising our children to follow those dogmas. Later in my life, through education and maturity, my religious views broadened and I became aware of Buddhism and Hinduism and other philosophies which have their roots in the earliest places and times in our civilization. As I have aged, many of these philosophies have been incorporated into my personal spiritual practices, and I am no longer an adherent of one religion. Like kimk above, my church is now largely in nature, yet even museums, among great works of art, in symphony halls amid great musical works, and theaters, where great dramatic pieces are enacted, I find the spirit. I even find spiritual guidance and enlightenment in some works of literature I read today - as well as in excerpts from the Bible and the Torah and the Bagivad Gita.

Posted Nov. 29, 2017
|
|
|

veronicaj

Join Date: 05/25/17

Posts: 13

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

No. BUT I am influenced in my behavior and ethics, my moral grounding, by having a Catholic education from grade school through college.

Posted Nov. 29, 2017
|
|
|

reene

Join Date: 02/18/15

Posts: 312

Expert

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

I was raised in the Catholic religion, and studied from grade school through college. I raised my children to receive the sacraments, but as I grew older I still believed in God, saints and Angels, but could no longer believe in the Church. Like so many of the other readers I found my God in nature. The wisdom of trees, flowers and especially the ocean. I usually go to the beach to pray and find peace.

Posted Dec. 03, 2017
|
|
|

jww

Join Date: 05/31/11

Posts: 148

Expert

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

I was raised Protestant Christian but no longer adhere to those principles. My path to the present has been varied. I have studied non-mainstream beliefs - one very similar to Christian Science - and taken the parts of each that I could believe in without hesitation. I think a persons spiritual journey is just that - a path. Each study is a stepping stone to our ultimate belief system. Above all else I believe in a greater power than myself. I pray to the universe and the universality of all things.

Posted Dec. 03, 2017
|
|
|

marymargaretf

Join Date: 09/05/11

Posts: 39

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

My Catholicism is grounded in the example given by my parents. It has been constant throughout my life and continues to center me as I begin my seventies. I hsve never attended Catholic schools and I have enjoyed the study of comparative religions. An element of spirituality has strengthened my beliefs. I am comfortable with my faith and while I do not wear it on my sleeve, it is at my very core.

Posted Dec. 03, 2017
|
|
|

madelonw

Join Date: 11/20/17

Posts: 18

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

I was raised as a Missouri Snyod Lutheran but go to an Evangelical Lutheran Church. The ELCA has a great emphasis on helping the poor in the community as well as other states and countries. More so than the Lutheran church I was raised in as a child. This felt like the appropriate direction for me. I have not experimented with other faiths.

Posted Dec. 04, 2017
|
|
|

Savanna

Join Date: 08/04/15

Posts: 8

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

I am usually respectful of other religions - I feel for some it is a coping mechanism to deal with what life hands you. I was raised as an atheist so it is difficult for me to understand someone blindly following a faith - that 1) was foisted upon them as an adult and, even worse, 2) that threatens their child. However, it also contrasts with the way Linda was raised - out of the mainstream with no thought to how it would affect their children.

Posted Dec. 04, 2017
|
|
|

Maggie

Join Date: 01/01/16

Posts: 155

Expert

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

My mother and her family were Lutherans however at a young age mother stopped attending church. So although I always believed in God I did not have biblical training. In the early 90’s I joined the Presbyterian church. Very happy at my church. I attended Bible Study Fellowship for eight years in the 90’s and after retiring in 2015 am again attending BSF and continuing to learn. So no I have never been involved in other religions.

Posted Dec. 04, 2017
|
|
|

marganna

Join Date: 10/14/11

Posts: 119

Expert

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

No, I do not. I was raised pretty main stream - Methodist, Episcopalian. As an adult I spent a couple years going to our local Center for Spiritual Living which could be called slightly out of the mainstream but in my opinion, not really. Yes, my religious experience has changed as I've aged. Not much into organized religion any more.

Posted Dec. 05, 2017
|
|
|

peggya

Join Date: 06/03/15

Posts: 25

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

I was raised in the Catholic tradition and still practice my faith. As in other mainstream belief systems, there are die hard fundamentalists and then at the other side of the spectrum, there are liberal strains in every religious faith. Various religions are like spokes on a wheel. At the hub is a Being greater than ourselves which people call God, Buddha, or Yahweh. Central teachings are the same: loving our neighbor as well as ourselves.

Posted Dec. 06, 2017
|
|
|

JLPen77

Join Date: 02/05/16

Posts: 259

Expert

RE: Do you adhere to the faith you were raised in? Did you ever experiment with a religion that is out of the mainstream? Has your religious experience changed as you've aged?

IMO, Patra is a negative example of a religious follower: someone who adopts a religion not by way of a personal spiritual journey and genuine conviction, but for social reasons,such as to please someone (in her case, Leo), looking outside oneself to find the answers, to be led and told what to do. Even though it seems she is uncomfortable with being a Christian Scientist, she blindly follows Leo and his faith.

I left the church I was raised in (mainstream Christian) as a teenager, attended a UU youth group with friends, and as a young adult, didn't really follow any religion; I thought of myself as an agnostic, respectful of all faiths but not really understanding what it was all about. I certainly did not see God as a person-like being, a "guy in the sky," but I didn't have any other way of thinking about that concept. At the same time, I always felt there might be more to life than the material. (I had a strange experience of that in my teens.) Parenthood in my 30s led me to take up my spiritual journey, and after several decades of being active in Unitarian Universalism, in my 60s I have also come to think of myself as a progressive Christian as well as a UU-- a return to the faith I grew up in, but on a different level, taking scripture seriously but not literally (and for me, serious literature can be scripture too, especially poetry, and scriptures of other faiths...) I am content to say God is a mystery, a word we use to point to all that is good and beautiful and healing, a creative energy at work that we can experience through our loving relationships, through art and music, through the pursuit of science, and in the "church" of nature. Jesus (and all great religious leaders) was human, and divinely inspired; he is a great moral example, but not the only one. I think it is up to each person to decide for him or herself and if following a faith, interpret it for him or herself. Tradition is only alive and worthwhile if you can find meaning in it for yourself.

A church is a way for people of faith to support one another and to act together out of shared values to do good in the world, such as helping the poor and advocating for justice. For me, that is the only point of "organized" religion... I would never say people without an organized religion can't be deeply spiritual and/or moral people. And many people who claim to be religious are, to my mind, not religious at all.. and Patra and Leo are good examples of that, not just because of their son's death, but also because of how they treated Linda.